ABSTRACT
Indonesia is an extreme example of neoliberal globalisation, exhibiting prominent roles for the market and private sector, accelerated opening of global markets, breakdown of national borders, increased role of international (financial and political) institutions, the reduction of subsidies, and social welfare protection programmes for the poor. There remains a state apparatus that attempts to perform its duties of law enforcement, market regulation and service delivery, while prioritising the maintenance of national unity at all costs in an increasingly nationalist and fractured political context. Critics observe that the neoliberal good governance project can be counter-productive (Moore 2001; MacEwan 1999; Duffield 2001), the latest version of the goal of linear development or modernisation, which ‘similarly entitles the North to develop and democratise the South in its image’ (Abrahamsen 2000). The international is present in the domestic, and increasingly local constituencies experience and engage with direct lines of control by global actors.
